History

The Baden Academy Charter School Media Lab is a center for creative inquiry, experimentation, and discovery. The Lab’s innovative research approaches empower a community of learners to bring to fruition real world projects that benefit the entire community. It is located on the first floor at Baden Academy Charter School.

The Lab is an atmosphere unconstrained by traditional disciplines and supports cross discipline efforts to generate worthy ideas, engage in critical research, prototype using out of the box thinking, imagineer great design and beauty, reflect on the skills and relationships built, and creatively present the fruits of project/passion based learning.

The Lab takes its cue from several ground-breaking innovation labs around the country.

CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center’s interdisciplinary approach to combine technology and fine arts with a focus to produce artifacts that are intended to entertain, inform, inspire, or otherwise affect others.

The d.school at Stanford focus on alternative methods of problem solving and allowing the type of problem we want to solve shape how we should use the tools of design thinking.

The MIT Media Lab’s ground-breaking antidisciplinary approach to the development of systems to improve the way people live, learn, express themselves, work and play.

Students are encouraged to take risks, pull others across perceived boundaries, and engage all members of our learning community – administration, teachers, and students alike – to discover and apply new possibilities for advancing our mission.

Thinking, working, and learning both “outside the box” and “beyond the clock” of the traditional public school model, students and faculty working in the Lab apply unorthodox learning, teaching and research strategies to envision innovative solutions for overcoming barriers to education success and achievement.

Research Fellows Program

Beginning on Grade 3, Baden Academy Charter School students have the opportunity to apply to serve as a Research Fellow in the Media Lab. Research Fellows have robust opportunities for creative inquiry into fields of study that pique their imaginations and resonate with their unique talents and individual passions. They will also make valuable contributions to the entire Baden Academy learning community by pursuing real-world study projects that will be shared and disseminated throughout the school.

The Fellows at Baden Academy Charter School engage in research projects that instill and strengthen a 21st-Century skill set for students and teachers alike. Working within the framework of Baden Academy’s arts-integrated and infused learning environment, the Fellows Program identifies and applies skills and insights cultivated from the arts (music, theater, dance, visual arts, creative writing) in diverse projects that touch upon multiple fields of study (e.g. engineering, science, math, medicine, education, energy, technology) while pursuing their individual interests. Research Fellows will come together as a team for group discovery and collaboration. Along with creativity and collaboration, Research Fellows will be challenged appropriately to develop their critical thinking and communication skills.

Mentors

Mentors from around the globe are solicited to assist our research fellows face the challenges of their project. Mentor communicate their own experience and takes a special interest in helping this student develop into a successful professional. Baden Academy Media Lab Research Fellows mentors are specifically expected to:

Help the Research Fellow arrive at clearly stated goals and objectives of any proposed research projects;

Monitor the fellow’s research experience once a month to discuss progress, results and plans for next steps;

Complete formal evaluation forms at the end of the school year.

Research and Teaching Mentors are also invited to join the fellows at the annual celebration at the end of the school year.